The 10 Elements of Agroecology interconnected: Making them operational in FAO’s work on agroecology

Agroecology is gaining traction as a way to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through more sustainable food systems within earth’s planetary boundaries. It represents a way to inform a holistic approach to food and agricultural systems that can better meet the societal and biophysical needs of this current generation and generations to come. Agroecology has been described as the application of ecological principles and concepts to the design and management of sustainable food systems and has been called “a science, practice, and social movement.” (Altieri, 1995; Wezel et al., 2009). Agroecology has been practiced across the globe for some time even before Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations’ (FAO’s) work began on agroecology, as has been documented by various authors (Altieri, 1995; Gliessman, 2016; Vandermeer and Perfecto, 2017). It has been practiced at many different scales, time frames, and different socio–cultural–ecological contexts, demanding a context-specific approach that is rooted in these realities. As agroecology is manifested in different contexts, specific contextualized food systems emerge that link the dimensions and build sustainability.

Similar to the study and implementation of complex adaptive systems, agroecology needs framework tools for determining boundary conditions, entry points, and anchor points in which to assess and design (or redesign) sustainable food systems. This is particularly necessary owing to the different historic and present approaches to agroecology that range, as Wezel et al. (2009) point out, from the biophysical and plot-level research angle to the farm-level practices to the social movement driven advocacy that seek to change food systems and their governance. Gliessman (2016), through different editions of a seminal text on agroecology, also expands upon the science into the redesign of the entire food system. How to encapsulate these different manifestations of agroecology globally at different scales and in different contexts can benefit from a variety of frameworks within which to think, work and operationalize agroecology according to the context and the needs.

In addition to the challenges of conceptualizing the contextual, cocreated nature of agroecology, the concepts of territory, transition, and transformation must be included in any conceptualization. In 2016, Wezel et al. pointed out that the development of sustainable systems at the territorial scale was still being neglected in conceptualizations about agroecology. They further defined that territories are places of transition processes that need to include the domains of adaptation of agroecological practices, conservation of biodiversity and natural resources, and development of embedded food systems (Wezel et al., 2016). Duru et al. (2015) also propose an integrative conceptual framework for agroecology that uses a participatory methodology to design agroecological transitions at the local level. Anderson et al. (2019) move beyond transitions and propose six domains of transformation for sustainable and just food systems that include fundamental concepts of social justice and autonomy. This idea of transformation is also advanced by the 2030 Agenda of the United Nations, which states: “Transformation requires attacking the root causes that generate and reproduce economic, social, political, and environmental problems and inequities, not merely their symptoms” (UN Research Institute for Social Development, 2017). Hence, the two terms are complimentary, as transformation is needed to support agroecological transitions to sustainable agriculture and food systems. Agroecological transitions can be understood in this manuscript as those involving transformations guided by the 10 Elements of Agroecology framework (FAO, 2018f).

The 10 Elements of Agroecology, as agreed by FAO member states, has become a key framework and unified grounding approach to FAO’s work on agroecology (Barrios et al., 2020), among other principles-based frameworks (CIDSE, 2018; Wezel et al., 2020) that seeks to provide a conceptual starting point to meet the challenges mentioned above that is flexible, robust, contextualized, and transformative. Other existing principles-based approaches include Nicholls et al. (2016), Dumont et al. (2016), and CIDSE (2018), which have been recently consolidated with the 10 Elements by Wezel et al. (2020) into a set of 13 principles. This paper describes FAO’s broad work on agroecology with the Scaling Up Agroecology Initiative as the umbrella which is grounded on the 10 Elements of Agroecology. It also describes an evolving policy bridge effort that is being piloted through the Tool for Agroecology Performance Evaluation (TAPE), which is also underpinned by and connected to the 10 Elements in order to drive food systems transformation. Agroecology praxis brings together disparate efforts spanning from biophysical research, to those by advocacy organizations seeking responsible governance, as part of a broader spectrum of actions converging to support agrifood system transformation.

This paper is organized as follows: (1) overview of FAO’s work on agroecology historically and structurally, (2) key integrated tools supporting FAO’s work on agroecology, (3) examples of a policy bridge showing linkages between the tools and structure of the work and ways to strengthen the policy bridge, and (4) conclusions and ways forward to expand uptake of agroecology.

Agroecology has been practiced by different stakeholders in different settings for differing periods of time even before FAO began working on agroecology in a formal manner. In fact, agroecology has been evolving since the term was first used in the 1930s (Wezel and Soldat, 2009) from an initial focus at the field and farm scale (Altieri, 1995; Vandermeer et al., 1998) to encompassing the whole food system (Francis et al., 2003; Wezel and David, 2012; Gliessman, 2014; Gliessman, 2022). However, since 2014, FAO has endeavored to help facilitate its up-scaling and out-scaling simultaneously via an approach that seeks to avoid favoring any one group, stakeholder, context, or geographic region, but that is accessible and operable across these considerations. This current paper attempts to characterize and harmonize the methods, tools, and processes that FAO has developed and is developing to give a systems-wide snapshot of the opportunities present so that agroecology can move forward with more unity and efficacy across the dimensions of sustainability. Of course, this work has not been without challenges, which this paper will also explore.

As part of its mandate, FAO has been playing a leading role in sustainable food and agricultural systems for the past decades, but work was codified with the launch of FAO’s Common Vision for Sustainable Food and Agriculture framework (FAO, 2014). This framework consists of 5 guiding principles: (1) improving efficiency in the use of resources; (2) conserving, protecting, and enhancing natural ecosystems; (3) protecting and improving rural livelihoods, equity and social well-being; (4) enhancing resilience of people, communities and ecosystems; and (5) promoting good governance of both natural and human systems.

Since 2014, FAO has played a leading role in facilitating specific agroecology discussions and dialogues among many different regions and stakeholders, beginning with the First International Symposium on Agroecology in 2014. Following, seven different regional multi-stakeholder meetings were held globally, bringing together policy makers, academics, Civil Society Organizations, and practitioners to discuss the merits and needs of agroecology and how agroecology could be scaled-up to help achieve zero hunger and other SDGs (FAO, 2018d; FAO, 2018g). Those seven regional dialogues culminated in the Second International Symposium on Agroecology in 2018, bringing together the lessons learned from the prior 8 meetings. In total, these meetings brought together more than 2,100 participants from 170 countries (FAO, 2018b) and launched numerous frameworks, documents, and summaries helpful for expanding agroecology.

The Second International Symposium on Agroecology was important in that it marked a shift from dialogue to action (FAO, 2019a), with the Chair’s Summary of the Symposium and various recommendations from the countries and partner organizations present stressing the role of FAO as facilitator (FAO, 2018a) of a broader work across UN agencies, and the need for concerted and unified actions in order to promote synergies of activities to bring about concrete transformations of food and agricultural systems. Probably most importantly, the Second Symposium formally launched the Scaling Up Agroecology Initiative (SUAI), which provides an umbrella for all of FAO’s normative and operational work on agroecology. Taken together, these outputs and initiatives have served to catalyze the work of FAO on agroecology and facilitate its scaling up and have led to the development of more tools and practical guidance documents. We will look more in depth at the main building blocks and their interconnectedness and interrelatedness, paying particular attention to how the 10 Elements of Agroecology have helped to underpin all of these initiatives and serve as a glue holding and synergizing them together.

FAO’s work is of a dual, but interconnected nature: that of normative and operational work (Table 1) (FAO, 1998). Normative work, which was recently expanded to include 7 core normative functions of the organization (Table 2) (FAO, 2015), tends to have broader global applicability through activities such as global level databases, scientific and technical standards, and policy-oriented guidance. Operational work tends to have a focus on a specific country context or group of countries, and includes outputs such as practical guidelines and advice, improved national datasets, and strengthened institutions. The two sets of activities are not only largely interdependent, but they are also mutually reinforcing: The quality of FAO’s activities in the field via operational work is ensured by the constant nourishment derived from the Organization’s normative resources. Likewise, FAO’s normative work is constantly reinforced by lessons learned in the field. Indeed, it is this combination of normative and operational activities as well as the capacity to span the consequent divide in many of its programs that give FAO its comparative advantages and explain the unique “value added” that it can provide Member Nations (FAO, 1998).

Derived from this understanding, FAO’s work on agroecology attempts to combine the normative and operational aspects and the Seven Core Functions to create synergies through their linkages, thus creating a policy bridge. As such, this paper will treat the normative and operational aspects of FAO’s work on agroecology as interlinked and interdependent, with a foundation built on the 10 Elements.

As mentioned before, agroecology has been around a very long time and has taken on particular contextual textures. FAO’s work on agroecology emerged from participatory multi-stakeholder dialogues that spanned the globe to learn about the various attributes, manifestations, and aspirations of agroecology in specific biophysical and socio-cultural contexts at varying scales and time frames. To document these expressions in an attempt to not favor a particular definition of agroecology, but to create a clear framework for agroecology to advance, FAO initiated a synthesis process of the development of a usable framework combining the outputs of the 8 fora with scientific literature and seminal works on agroecology. The end product was the 10 Elements framework, whose publication was launched during the Second International Agroecology Symposium in Rome, April 2018 (FAO, 2018f), approved by FAO Governing Bodies in November 2019, and described in greater detail in 2020 (Barrios et al., 2020).

The 10 Elements framework was created to serve as a guide to help countries and other actors operationalize agroecology both through normative and operational means and systematize it across a range of elements that are rooted in the dimensions of sustainability and the realities of agroecology (FAO, 2018f) and transformative needs (Anderson et al., 2019) yet are flexible enough to reflect the on-the-ground realities of the context of interest (Barrios et al., 2020). The 10 Elements are grouped based on the principle functions and inference of those elements and include (Figure 1):

• The elements of (1) diversity and (2) co-creation and sharing of knowledge are foundational and showcase innovation which are characteristic of agroecological systems and help to guide diversification choices aimed at creating the element of (3) synergies;

• The elements of (4) efficiency and (5) resilience are emergent properties of systems built upon the above three elements and where the element of (6) recycling is a central practice;

• The elements of (7) human and social values and (8) culture and food traditions, which describe context features of systems; and,

• The elements of (9) responsible governance and (10) circular and solidarity economy which describe the enabling environment context as well as serving as aspirational goals (FAO, 2018b).

It is important to recognize that while enhancing synergies (and reducing tradeoffs) constitute important goals and motivations during food and agricultural system design/redesign, efficiency and resilience can also be thought of as emergent properties of healthy agroecological transitions to sustainable agriculture and food systems and that all of the elements are interlinked and interdependent, capturing the idea of systems complexity, as manifest in food systems with their biophysical, socio-cultural, and policy realities.

Of particular importance in agroecology and the 10 Elements framework is the idea of scale, time frame, and context, often envisaged in terms of a territory at a given point in time (Wezel et al., 2009; Wezel et al., 2016). A territory offers a particular way of thinking about boundary conditions based on differing factors of interest for framing thoughts and analysis about a food and agricultural system and is the place where a transition process toward sustainable agriculture and food systems is engaged (Wezel et al., 2016).

A recent review paper details the global consultation process leading to the development of the framework, brings together the scientific evidence supporting each element often found dispersed across the literature, and highlights with real-life examples the usefulness of the framework to facilitate the design of differentiated paths for the transformation of agriculture and food systems (Barrios et al., 2020). Offering different entry points, the elements can help facilitate the identification, exploration, characterization, analysis of current systems at different scales and provides plausible theories of transformative change for those systems. Because the framework was developed in an inclusive manner that does not favor one definition, stakeholder, or region above another, they have universal applicability. Moreover, by their very nature of multiple entry points, complexity, and interconnectedness, the elements can supersede linear thinking and transformation pathways by offering an interconnected approach to levels of transition more typically associated by vertical scales (Gliessman, 2016) and not limit systems thinking to pre-set pre-defined principles such as were proposed in the report of the High Level Panel of Experts (HLPE, 2019), but offer a basis for articulation of scales, context, and time frames with greater flexibility. Furthermore, a recent review by Wezel et al. (2020) confirms that the 13 HLPE principles are well aligned and complementary to the 10 Elements of Agroecology and their implications can be harmonized for transitions to sustainable food and agricultural systems. Before and since the 10 Elements were published, other frameworks existed and have been created. It is hoped that in the spirit of agroecology, these can coexist and be utilized by actors depending on their particular needs and contexts, but the abundance of multiple frameworks might bring confusion, which is a concern. However, criticisms of the 10 Elements have included that the elements are heterogeneous and need to be operationalized, and that the 13 Principles may offer greater granularity and tangible indicators.

The adaptive usefulness of the 10 Elements of Agroecology supports the Scaling Up Initiative by fostering holistic thinking and a systems approach during agroecological transitions. They are finding their home in participatory analyses, mapping exercises to think more holistically about complexity in food and agricultural systems (for instance, mapping aspects of national agricultural investment plans against the elements to determine if certain government priorities and policies contribute to or hamper sustainability), and in visual narrative exercises for students, farmers, extension agents, etc. to help characterize a system. The usefulness of the 10 Elements is that they can be used at multiple scales (farm/household, community, market, territorial, food shed level, etc.) at a given point in time and biophysical and socioeconomic context to identify the current status of those scales/systems and provide entry points and potential pathways for increasing sustainability in the future. It is in this flexibility that FAO has used nexus analyses and developed visual narratives as a mapping and visioning tool that uses the 10 Elements to represent the realities and plausible pathways of transformative change of systems to help foster complex adaptive thinking around food and agricultural systems (Barrios et al., 2020).

Unveiled at the Second Symposium, the Scaling Up Agroecology Initiative was launched by FAO together with other major UN partners as a strategic approach to achieve the 2030 Agenda. It was developed through a synthesis process during the regional symposia, built on the needs, experiences, and lessons of a diverse array of stakeholders. The Initiative was created in synergy with other plans and initiatives, including but not limited to the 2030 Agenda, the UN Decade on Family Farming, the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, the UN Decade on Biodiversity, the UN Decade on Action on Nutrition, and others, with the aim to accompany and support national agroecology transition processes through policy and technical capacity building, creating synergies between countries, actors, UN partners, and with the aforementioned plans and initiatives.

The Scaling Up Agroecology Initiative is seen as an overarching umbrella for FAO’s work on Agroecology (Figure 2) that touches on both the normative and operational aspects because agroecology can support the achievement of multiple objectives, including increasing economic, environmental, social, health and nutrition dimensions of rural livelihoods, as well as resilience, while preserving biodiversity and mitigating climate change.

The Initiative focuses on 3 core areas of work and 5 key actions to harness opportunities and synergies while overcoming “lock-ins” and challenges in order to scale up agroecology (FAO, 2018e; Table 3). The main areas of work bridge the normative and operational and include: (1) knowledge and innovation for sustainable food and agricultural systems, (2) policy processes for transformation of food and agricultural systems, and (3) building connections for transformative change. Five key actions are outlined for scaling up agroecology and serve as a holistic way to support the key areas of work because these actions cut across and connect normative and operational and are accomplished at various scales, cutting across dimensions of sustainability (Table 3). Central to these areas of work and key actions is the development of tools, knowledge pieces, and initiatives that support and strengthen the overarching objective of the Initiative and the 2030 Agenda. These areas of work are also similar to and have the potential to address the six domains of transformation (access to natural ecosystems, knowledge and culture, systems of exchange, networks, discourse, and gender and equity) as proposed by Anderson et al. (2019).

As an overarching umbrella for scaling up agroecology by accompanying and supporting national agroecology transition processes, three key outputs have been created to synergize and strengthen the initiative. These include: the 10 Elements of Agroecology framework (discussed previously), (FAO, 2018f), the Agroecology Knowledge Hub (AKH), and the TAPE, which link to and support each other, as shown by the double-sided arrows in Figure 2. Central to FAO’s thinking and operationalization of agroecology using these outputs under the Scaling Up Initiative that spans normative and operational work is embracing the 10 Elements of Agroecology framework.

As an outgrowth of the experiences, evidence, case studies, lessons learned and needs gathered over the course of 9 international and regional fora on agroecology conducted by FAO, the Agroecology Knowledge Hub (FAO, 2021) was developed. It was originally structured around the 10 Elements of Agroecology since they embody different principles of agroecology found in many different systems and bridge the operational and normative aspects of FAO’s work, hence the arrows between the Agroecology Knowledge Hub and the 10 Elements (Figure 2). It was envisioned and developed to engage diverse stakeholders, share knowledge, and aggregate evidence and practices on agroecology across the world but rooted in local contexts and realities. Its structure and use are built around the element of Co-Creation and Sharing of Knowledge and its use is linked to the 10 Elements, TAPE (see below), and the broader Scaling Up Agroecology Initiative to capture, disseminate, and co-create knowledge that is useful for many different actors in agroecology. It supports the primary areas of work 1 & 3 of the Scaling Up Initiative (Table 3). Currently, the hub has 2,090 resources available, is frequented by an average of 16,266 users per month, and has a newsletter subscription of 3,044 entities, making it a very sought after resource.

A key challenge to agriculture and food systems transformation resides in the difficulty of defining transitions towards sustainability that respond to both local and national expectations and desires, as well as global commitments (Caron et al., 2018; Veldhuizen et al., 2020). Visual narratives using the 10 Elements of Agroecology have been proposed as a possible tool to face this coherence and alignment challenge while enabling agroecological transitions (Barrios et al., 2020; FAO, 2023). This involves highlighting promising entry points, namely: biodiversity (i.e., Element: Diversity), consumers (i.e., Element: Circular and solidarity economy), education (i.e., Element: Co-creation and sharing of knowledge) and governance (i.e., Element: Responsible governance) (Wezel et al., 2020). Thereafter, for each entry point, identifying a promising nexus that highlights outstanding interactions with multiple sectors, and where icons representing each Element build visual narratives to systematically describe plausible theories of transformative change towards sustainable agriculture and food systems. FAO is in the process of developing a sourcebook for participatory means by which to identify, co-create, design, and implement visual narratives for agrifood systems transformation as highlighted in Barrios et al. (2020) and FAO (2023), and continuing to integrate the 10 Elements framework into other tools and processes such as TAPE (double-sided arrows, Figure 2).

The most advanced use of the 10 Elements by FAO for its normative work is in the creation of the TAPE. TAPE was developed by FAO and many partners to fulfill one of FAO’s Governing Body’s mandates “to assist countries and regions to engage more effectively in the transition processes towards sustainable agriculture and food systems by strengthening normative, science and evidence-based work on agroecology, developing metrics, tools and protocols to evaluate the contribution of agroecology and other approaches to the transformation of sustainable agriculture and food systems” (FAO, 2018c).

TAPE produces multi-dimensional evidence on the performance of agroecology across the dimensions of sustainability, which is rooted in the 10 Elements (Figure 2). This tool was designed to be easy to use and requires few resources, while at the same time providing a thorough overview of the overall sustainability of a system at a given point in time. Its analysis of performance is explicitly linked to the SDGs. The result is a comprehensive tool based on various existing assessment frameworks wherever possible to give an overall snapshot of a particular system in time, place, and scale. According to two of the 20 principles laid out for the development of TAPE (FAO, 2019b), the tool needs to collect evidence at the farm/household level but also make inference to the wider territorial/market/food system to truly advance agroecology. To meet these two principles simultaneously, TAPE utilizes a stepwise approach (Figure 3) (Mottet et al., 2020).

The various steps of TAPE include: a Step 0 description of systems and context that is conducted at the territorial (community, political unit, market unit, watershed, food shed, etc.) level that identifies and characterizes the production systems, types of households, agroecological zones, biophysical context features, socio-ecological context features, existing policies that enable or disable agroecology, and any form of enabling environment at a given point in time. This step can be conducted as a desk review, but is increasingly being conducted as a participatory process in order enhance relevance, credibility and legitimacy while documenting policy needs to elicit change. Pilot studies are beginning to incorporate a holistic visualization during the participatory development of visual narratives using the 10 Elements to model the territorial agrifood system as a baseline for a territorial understanding of change; however this step has not been widely conducted in a participatory manner, a key need for future users of TAPE to incorporate (Figure 4).

The next 2 steps are conducted at the farm or household level from samples and inference spaces determined during Step 0 to collect quantifiable data on the performance of agroecology. Step 1 creates a Characterization of Agroecological Transition (CAET) which is based on the 10 Elements employing descriptive scales (Figure 2). For each element, 3–4 indices are utilized to characterize the particular farm/household’s position along an agroecological transition scale (of 0–100, where 0 is the least agroecological level and 100 is the most advanced one) to create a sustainability baseline of that particular farm/household. For instance, for the element of Diversity, 4 indices are utilized based on a modified Likert-type scale that can be aggregated to characterize the farm’s transition (based on a scale of 0–100) for that element. This is repeated for each of the 10 Elements, and scores can be plotted on a radar-type diagram to give an overall diagnostic of the transition to agroecology for that farm in time and place. It is important to note that the indices, although focusing on a particular element are interlinked and interdependent, and aligned with the 10 Elements as well as with the HLPE 13 principles (HLPE, 2019). This can be seen in the previous example of Diversity, where there are plant and animal diversity assessments, but diversity is also linked to other productive activities (i.e., touching on Circular and Solidarity Economy and Resilience). This step is simple enough to be conducted by producers and their organizations but has also been successfully implemented by enumerators, extension agents, NGO workers, and project managers. Utilizing a representation of overall diagnostic performance via a radar diagram based on the 10 Elements serves as an important entry point for future discussions on enabling factor presence, needs, and entry points to increase sustainability (see Step 3 below). An optional Step 1-bis can be used with a statistical or participatory clustering to reduce sample size of Step 2 (FAO, 2019b).

Once Step 1 is completed, Step 2 is conducted to measure progress and quantify impact of agroecology through a selected list of core criteria of performance (FAO, 2019b). This step addresses 5 core dimensions that are of importance to policy makers and to the SDGs (governance, economy, health and nutrition, society and culture, and environment), which also have clear linkages to agroecology principles and the 10 Elements (Mottet et al., 2020). This step utilizes 10 existing criteria based on existing methodologies that create quantitative data (FAO, 2019b; Mottet et al., 2020). This step has a farm walk component, a gender disaggregated component, and is designed to easily collect data. Both Step 1 and Step 2 are conducted via a KoBo Toolbox survey (KoBo is a free, open-source suite of data collection tools for field environments) (KoBo Toolbox, 2022) and typically take 2-3.5 hours to complete. Step 1 and Step 2 are linked together, with Step 1 providing a diagnostic or characterization of the level of agroecological transition and Step 2 quantifying the multi-dimensional performance for that particular farm or household at a particular point in time. When aggregated based on sampling strategy and inference space (FAO, 2019b; Mottet et al., 2020), Step 3, the Analysis and Participatory Interpretation step, is conducted at the territorial level and is designed to allow the community/territory to review the Step 1 and 2 results on the impact and performance of agroecology, explain the results based on the context and enabling/disabling environment from Step 0, explore the linkages between Step 1 and the performances of Step 2, and discuss what enabling factors need to be strengthened and disabling factors need to be removed or overcome to advance particular needs and desires (Mottet et al., 2020). This process is similar to that proposed by Duru et al. (2015) for driving transitions. This is also a time to utilize the 10 Elements framework via visual narratives (Barrios et al., 2020) to support the holistic, inclusive and participatory exploration of most suitable entry points (individual elements) to guide communities in the process of envisioning scenarios and codeveloping transformation pathways towards sustainable agriculture and food systems (Figure 4). Similar to Step 0, more time and resources need to be utilized by TAPE users for this step to enhance ownership through effective participatory methodologies to better support transformative change. To help in this endeavor, an option sourcebook for conducting Step 3 is in the process of being published by FAO highlighting participatory approaches and frameworks that users can include.

FAO is interested in using TAPE to measure the performance of agroecology and other agricultural approaches and to provide evidence-based linkages to enabling environments in specific territories to the Scaling Up Initiative to drive change by pinpointing intervention strategies to help create enabling environments and remove disabling factors. The end goal is to drive systems transformation across similar domains to those proposed by Anderson et al. (2019). The 10 Elements serve as the backbone of this approach to both begin the discussion about territorial systems, provide evidence about the performance of agroecological systems, and bring those strategic entry points back into the policy and enabling environment realm to elicit transformative change (Figure 2).

It is important to note that transitions (whether at individual farm or territorial scales) and transformations occur through time (Vermeulen et al., 2018), and although TAPE provides information on the agroecological performance of farms and territories at a snapshot in time, with longitudinal data collection when using TAPE as a monitoring and evaluation tool, we will be able to measure, assess, and realign interventions to help drive positive transitions. Here is where the policy bridge begins, linking praxis to policy change based on individual and territorial needs and desires driven by data collected through the utilization of TAPE and Visual Narratives (Figure 4). According to Elementa, a policy bridge is an article focused on bridging scientific knowledge with Policy issues, policy options and recommendations, or policy analysis (https://online.ucpress.edu/elementa/pages/About).

There is a thread that connects the various tools that FAO has developed to help countries and other actors operationalize agroecology via its normative and operational work, and the foundation of this thread is the 10 Elements framework (Figure 2). Both the 10 Elements and TAPE outputs emerged from participatory and synthesis processes that spanned many different actors and stakeholders. They both seek to tackle the complexity of agroecology by applying a systems framework, deconstructing it to smaller pieces and reconstructing it back to the systems level to elicit change. Both are utilized at a particular scale, in time, and space with clear boundary conditions. In a nutshell, TAPE, when coupled with territorial approaches using Visual Narratives (both built on the 10 Elements; Figure 4) to characterize the territory and then interpret and validate data collected by TAPE, provide a means to bridge data (at farm and household level) with needed policy change (at territorial level); hence acting as a policy bridge.

Under the umbrella of the SUAI with its specific interrelated areas of work, TAPE, the 10 Elements, and the Agroecology Knowledge Hub find a home bridging (Figure 2) the evidence-based, praxis-policy-enabling nexus within and outside FAO by utilizing a feedback mechanism between Step 0 (territorial level; focus is on identification and characterization of biophysical and sociocultural context and enabling/disabling environments), Steps 1 and 2 (farm/household level; focus is on characterization of agroecological transitions using 10 Elements framework and quantifiable performance data), and Step 3 (aggregated results of Steps 1 and 2 that make inference back to the territorial context and enabling/disabling environment of Step 0 and open up policy and praxis discussions about data-driven decisions on how to elicit change for territory and farms/households to become more sustainable) (Figure 4). In a nutshell, TAPE creates a feedback mechanism between Step 0—Steps 1 and 2—Step 3 linking evidence to contextual features (cultural and environmental) and enabling environments (responsible governance and circular and solidarity economy) and provides linkages between data and exploration of co-created scenarios and transformation pathways for not only transitions, but also transformation (see Introduction) in a participatory manner that has the potential to address the needs identified by Duru et al. (2015) and Anderson et al. (2019).

In its first pilot application, TAPE was tested in 4 territories of Cambodia on 228 farms with the support of local NGOs. Here, the practitioners acknowledged TAPE’s potential to spread agroecological practices and principles among farmers and to co-create and share knowledge in a horizontal way. TAPE was also recognized as being particularly useful to holistically evaluate projects in time to assess transitions, and to support the holistic sustainability of agriculture and to help better understand the gaps between the different dimensions of agroecology and the actual practices implemented by farmers (Global Alliance for the Future of Food, 2021).

The sample strategy in Cambodia was not done to target specific agroecological farms, but to evaluate the typical productive systems that can be found in the different areas. For this reason, the majority of the results of Step 1 show that these farms have average scores of between 45 and 65 percent of the CAET spectrum (on an aggregated scale of 0-100), which can be considered a low and medium level of agroecological transition in time (where 0 is not agroecological and 100 is completely agroecological), respectively (Lucantoni et al., 2021). This range comprises farms that implement some agroecological practices and principles but 549 not systematically, or they implement practices in the field but lack the social and organizational aspects of agroecology (or vice-versa).

Figure 5a shows the results of the application of TAPE’s Step 1 in two provinces in Cambodia with aggregated farm data of 89 farms in Battambang and 29 farms in Ratanakiri: Sampled farms situated in Battambang province are more advanced in agroecologial terms than those sampled in Ratanakiri province, which is more isolated and based on subsistence agriculture. This is shown from the fact that the highest difference between the two provinces is seen in the element of Co-Creation and Sharing of Knowledge, suggesting that farmers are not aware of agroecological practices that they might implement synergistically in their fields, and that there are no grassroots organizations of farmers that can support the development, spreading and implementation of more sustainable practices.

Figure 5b shows the differences in agroecological aspects between a diversified crop-livestock farm in Siem Reap and a farm producing rice in monoculture in Kampong Chnang: The diversified farm outperforms the other in all of the 10 Elements of Agroecology, suggesting higher multidimensional sustainability, with more sustainable practices implemented in the field (elements of Diversity, Synergies, and Recycling), better food security (Culture & Food Traditions), more sustainable marketing practices (Circular & Solidarity Economy), and more organized producers (Responsible Governance), among others. Since both these farms are smallholders, (<1 ha in production), the least advanced ones should be accompanied and encouraged in their process of transition to achieve higher levels of sustainability in the economic, environmental, social, food security, and governance dimensions. Using the 10 Elements, the CAET provides a quick diagnostic of farms’ or territories’ multidimensional sustainability and shows strengths and weaknesses for beginning participatory discussions about how to improve sustainability in keeping with Duru et al.’s (2015) suggestion.

To provide a further diagnostic, the 228 farms evaluated with TAPE in Cambodia have been merged into 4 groups of comparable sizes according to their CAET score, and their results for Step 2 analyzed. Figure 6 shows how farms that are more advanced in the agroecological transition (measured with the CAET, based on the 10 Elements at a given point in time) perform much better on average on the quantitative 10 Core Criteria of Performance of Step 2. This is one way to measure the multi-dimensional impact of agroecology, whose holistic approach does not consider only economic criteria or indicators of yields, but considers the entire range of sustainability, summarized in the FAO’s 5 key principles of sustainability for food and agriculture (FAO, 2014), the UN’s SDGs, and Anderson et al.’s (2019) 6 domains of transformation.

Additionally, the use of a correlation matrix (Figure 7) can provide empirical evidence on the interrelations between the 10 Elements and the place of overall agroecological transition in the surveyed territories.

Since all the 10 Elements contribute to the overall CAET score of the evaluated systems, in this matrix, there are only positive correlations. Nonetheless, the different levels of correlation show which elements are more important in the measurement of the overall agroecological transition of the target territories. For instance, the elements that correlate the most are Diversity and Co-Creation and Sharing of Knowledge, meaning that in this sample, the most advanced agroecological farms are also the most diversified ones in their agricultural production. At the same time, the most advanced agroecological farms in the area are also those that are more aware of agroecological practices and principles, and are more prone to share these innovations with their peers.

The element of Resilience is also well correlated with the overall CAET, meaning that the most advanced agroecological farms in the area mostly coincide with the most resilient ones. The matrix of correlation also shows the internal correlations between the singular elements of agroecology. For instance, the element of Diversity correlates well with Synergies, Recycling and Resilience, which means that the most diversified farms are also those that create more ecosystem services, recycle more, and are more resilient. The opposite is also true: The most resilient farms are the most diversified ones but also those that are more aware of agroecological principles (good correlation with Co-Creation and Sharing of Knowledge) and have better organized and empowered producers (good correlation with Responsible Governance).

The analysis of the relationships between the results of TAPE’s Steps 1 and 2 can be done at a deeper level by analyzing singular dimensions or indicators, to focus the research on specific goals. Such results constitute an example of a possible use of TAPE for inquiring about the relationship between the level of holistic agricultural sustainability measured through the 10 Elements of Agroecology (totality of the CAET), location, and size of farm with the economic performance of farms: results could show a positive relationship between the level of agroecological transition, the farm’s location, and the farm’s revenue per hectare at a given point in time. In recent literature, more advanced agroecological farms tend to have similar yields per hectare than conventional ones (Ponisio et al., 2015; Epule and Bryant, 2016), while at the same time, they are more diversified and can produce different crops, fruits, or animal products in the same parcels (Teixeira et al., 2018) which contributes to enhanced overall gross revenue and resilience to environmental or economic shocks.

These results are even clearer when we analyze the expenditures for productive inputs: Figure 8 shows how less advanced agroecological farms spend, on average, much more for external inputs than more advanced ones, which are more self-sufficient and rely more on ecosystem services generated by positive synergies between the different components of their agroecosystems, and in keeping with the relationships of the 10 Elements between diversity, recycling, co-creation, and synergies (Altieri et al., 2012).

This translates into better net revenues for farmers that are more engaged with agroecology: Figure 9 shows how more advanced agroecological farms have on average, better net revenues per hectare, because they have similar or better yields than conventional production, a more diversified agricultural production, and less expenditures for external inputs (Paracchini et al., 2020).

Although utilizing the aggregate CAET score to look at correlations with certain criteria is an acceptable way to understand how the transition to agroecology impacts system performance using criteria, there are limits. Because the overall CAET score is an aggregated index at a particular point in time, and therefore could hide disparities between the 10 elements in certain systems, analyses at the level of singular CAET element can dig deeper into connections between Step 1 and Step 2, as shown by Figure 10. In Figure 10, which is from the utilization of TAPE on 132 farms in Uganda to establish a baseline of the status of agroecological transition, as the CAET score for the Element of Culture and Food Tradition increases, the soil health index of Step 2 increases. An explanation of this which emerges from the connection between Step 0 and the data via a participatory interpretation is because local and traditional practices, including the use of local varieties and breeds, are better adapted to local biotic and abiotic conditions and can lead to improved soil quality (Pauli et al., 2012). Ball et al. (2018) have proposed that direct, indirect, and temporal connections between people and soil can help improve the sustainability of the food system, which would be in keeping with this quantifiable example from Uganda. This key interdependence motivated the South-South development of participatory methodologies to integrate local and scientific knowledge on indicators of soil quality (Barrios et al., 2006; Barrios et al., 2012).

Similar analyses can be done for all the other dimensions of sustainability via linking the Step 1 CAET scores to the Step 2 core criteria of performance. Similar results to these presented have been achieved by exploring relationships between agroecological transition and e.g. agricultural biodiversity, or family’s dietary diversity, or women’s empowerment. TAPE is flexible enough to include any kind of indicator needed for specific analyses in Step 2.

Among others, these results and relationships can be used to better understand the needs of local farms and other productive systems in the context of projects of holistic sustainable development or extension needs. In fact, Step 1-bis (Figure 3) can be used to create typologies of producers characterized through TAPE, and specific activities/interventions can be tailored for the different typologies identified to enhance their weak points from a perspective of agroecology and sustainable development that is built on the 10 Elements and conducted via the participatory process of Step 3. It is also important to remember that TAPE provides a territorial snapshot of those production systems at a particular point in time. Because transitions occur temporally, TAPE is very well suited to be used multiple times to provide longitudinal data by which users can compare changes in transition by time, providing an exciting feedback loop for pinpointing the efficacy of interventions. This approach is being used in several Global Environment Facility projects which have used TAPE as a baseline and will re-sample the same farms for midterm and end-of-term evaluations to analyze the transition processes via interventions. Moreover, TAPE data collection can be accompanied with geospatial analysis of the results, which can be used to characterize territories and approach sustainable holistic development from a territorial point of view (Wezel et al., 2016) and in keeping with the 6 domains of transformation (Anderson et al., 2019). In this way, the data review of Step 0 can be used to interpret the results of Step 1 and Step 2, and the 10 Elements can be used for designing interventions in specific territories leading to transformation while addressing power and access issues.

This approach was utilized for the countries of Mali and Uganda, in which 233 farms and 132 farms from 6 and 3 territories in Mali and Uganda, respectively, were sampled with TAPE and then geospatial analysis was utilized to look for emerging patterns of agroecological transition. In Figure 11, a heat map shows the agroecological transition based on aggregated CAET scores for farms. In Eastern Uganda (top), there does not seem to be any spatial pattern of agroecological transition while for Mali, we can clearly identify and locate the less advanced farms in the Northern part of country and the more advanced farms in the Southern part of the country (Lucantoni et al., 2023). These geospatial clues built on CAET scores offer many possibilities for determining why farms are at a particular level of transition at a point in time, for sharing knowledge and information across farm types, and for pinpointing relevant interventions based on the combination of contextual features and performance data. What was lacking is a clear use of the Step 3 approach to draw out these needed interventions to promote transformative change. Too often, users of TAPE (especially academic) focus on data collection and analysis but it is essential to bridge the data with the context (Step 0) and interpret the results in light of changes needed across the different domains for transformation (Anderson et al., 2019). There is a tangible possibility here that needs funding and commitment but can drive fundamental change to systems if implemented.

As a way forward to continue to take a holistic and integrated approach for strengthening and scaling up agroecology by linking evidence with policy and enabling environment factors, we propose to combine the visual narratives using the 10 Elements and the data-gathering process from TAPE in order to drive field-level and higher enabling level decisions and interventions to drive transitions and transformation. To operationalize this, we propose that trainees are first introduced to the 10 Elements of agroecology framework through a short video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Reh7c2-ewI) and booklet based on the 10 Elements and endorsed by the FAO Council (FAO, 2018f; FAO, 2019c). Thereafter, we propose that a visual narratives tool (on paper, or electronic) (Barrios et al., 2020) that utilizes the 10 Elements become a participatory part of Step 0 to better define the territorial context and enabling environment, and to visualize plausible entry points and transition pathways at the onset of the use of TAPE (Figure 4). Then, once data has been collected at the farm/household level via Steps 1 and 2 at a point in time, aggregated data can then be utilized in Step 3 to determine if the data is in keeping with the territorial realities, if data need to be weighted or interpreted differently, and most importantly, so that the data can be used to link back to Step 0 through the visual narratives development participatory process to drive decision making on what enabling factors need to be implemented (or disabling factors removed) to scale up and scale out agroecology. This participatory, contextualized, territorial methodology is similar to that proposed by Duru et al. (2015) that considers and supports transformations at the intersection of multiple domains (Anderson et al., 2019). The 10 Elements via a visual narrative creation process therefore can be a key component of Step 0 and Step 3 and help to drive change (Figure 4) and offers the ability to analyze power and governance (Anderson et al., 2019). We also recommend that because transitions take place temporally, TAPE is used for baseline, mid-term, and end line monitoring and evaluation, as has already been taking place via different projects. This allows TAPE to not only measure the multidimensional impact of a project and the progress of sustainability change, but also provides a strong feedback loop to ascertain which interventions decided upon in Step 3 were successful and to help upscale that information to drive greater change (add supplemental information guide about Step 3).

When these territorial snapshots begin to emerge, they can help to build up and strengthen the SUAI by identifying opportunities for policy makers that can be used to help guide policy implementation to enable (or continue to enable) agroecological transitions at various levels (locally, nationally, regionally, and globally) and including all domains of transformation (Anderson et al., 2019). Moreover, results from TAPE and emerging lessons will be shared through the Agroecology Knowledge Hub, thereby decentralizing information to help drive change and further support the SUAI, helping countries and a diversity of other actors to advance agroecology.

In conclusion, FAO, over the past decade, has been working in agroecology via a participatory knowledge creation and sharing approach to benefit multiple actors at multiple scales. Launched in 2018, the Scaling Up Agroecology Initiative serves as an overarching umbrella through which FAO is working on Agroecology and facilitating other partners in their work to scale-up agroecology. In order to operationalize agroecology, FAO, with many partners, developed the 10 Elements of Agroecology to provide a flexible, systems-approach framework to guide thinking about the interlinked multi-dimensional aspects of sustainable food systems. The 10 Elements of Agroecology and TAPE are intimately linked in their development, participatory nature, and interconnectedness that link evidence to decision making and enabling environment promotion. Both take a systems approach to analyzing the sustainability of food systems at a particular scale, time, and place through a territorial lens. The overarching goal is to connect the various processes, knowledge exchange, data collection, and data utilization via a coherent mechanism that is decentralized and drives change.

The road hasn’t been easy, and there have been many challenges and lessons learned along the way which have helped to emphasize that TAPE is robust, flexible, and timely. From the beginning of TAPE’s development, the difficult balancing act has been to develop a multidimensional tool in a participatory manner, create data and inference to both the farm/household level and territorial levels simultaneously, to balance robust data collection with ease of use and a respect for farmers’ time, and to create a global harmonized database while also ensuring contextual relevance for particular territories. From its implementation and use, the emerging picture is that TAPE is able and has balanced these well. However, challenges remain but lessons learned have addressed these challenges in an inclusive and participatory iterative manner.

Some of the challenges concern TAPE and also the agroecology work in general of FAO. While the emergence of multiple agroecology frameworks has provided more flexibility to users, it has also created confusion as there can be significant redundancy, hence dispersing efforts and slowing convergence and alignment processes needed for collective action and impact. Additionally, political discussion, division and discord surrounding agroecology have been prevalent in different governing body meetings within and outside FAO. These have often slowed the process, but nonetheless, offer greater opportunity for buy-in and discussion. This was the particular case with the FAO Council discussion about the 10 Elements of Agroecology, which revised the 10 Elements through the iterative process (FAO, 2019c) and slowed the timeline of the agreed text from 2018 to 2020. However, the discussion surrounding the 10 Elements offered a time of political buy-in that may not have occurred otherwise. Similarly to the multiple frameworks for agroecology, TAPE was developed in an effort to create a concerted assessment by many different stakeholders working together. However, in the three years since TAPE was initially developed, a multitude of new assessment frameworks has emerged, also providing flexibility for users, but increasing confusion, redundancy and dispersion of resources (ACT, OSS, CAWR, and AVACLIM). In addition to the aforementioned challenges, TAPE’s pilot phase occurred during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, which shifted all training to a virtual modality. This resulted in more flexibility and more applications of TAPE, but it also delayed its final validation. In addition to a slowed validation, because TAPE has been disseminated widely to multiple actors (in a spirit of agroecological contextualization and disaggregation), the concurrent official refinement of TAPE with its field implementation has resulted in some users not keeping up with these changes. Indeed, since it was launched, TAPE has been used not only by development partners but also by research organizations and universities, which allowed its continuous refinement and improvement. An example of this is the recent manuscript by Namirembe et al. (2022), who implemented TAPE without staying abreast of its most recent developments from its piloting phase and provided criticisms of its use which could have been avoided if FAO had been consulted. The continuous improvement of TAPE, in partnership with its users, aims to address their challenges through regular adaptations in the questionnaires and specific development (e.g. a version for pastoralists) or advanced criteria (e.g. for biodiversity (Gilgen et al., 2023)). Since Namirembe et al. (2022) published their work, FAO has continued the iterative process of developing TAPE, most recently hosting a global webinar in November 2022 in which 460 participants attended and were able to share about their experiences with, provide constructive feedback on and ask questions about the use of TAPE. These experiences will be incorporated into the next edition of the TAPE guidance document, slated to be released with other adjustments after the Global TAPE Validation Workshop potentially to be held in May 2023. Dovetailing with the development of TAPE and its potential as a policy bridge and incorporating suggestions from Namirembe et al. (2022), is the newly released FAO (2023) document “Harnessing the potential of the 10 Elements of Agroecology to facilitate agrifood systems transformation” which will help to guide the use of the 10 Elements for stakeholders in diverse contexts to identify and co-design effective policies and interventions, thereby adding more robustness to Step 0 and tying it all together in Step 3, as has been proposed in this paper. We are excited to report back about findings on its use for implementation of policy bridges around the world in the coming years.

In spite of these challenges, many important lessons learned from the utilization of TAPE have emerged and been included in the refinement of the core framework and process of the tool. Some of the most important lessons learned include the need for consistent and adapted enumerator training on the use of TAPE that includes an intentional contextualization and adaptation of the tool to the local needs and context. We are finding that TAPE is incredibly flexible yet robust when this intentional contextualization happens for the particular cultural, ecological and political contextual factors. TAPE has also moved from a paper survey to a Google Form to a KoBo application now, which provide enormous power for ease of data collection, offline capability, ease of data harmonization, visualization, and analysis. Another key lesson learned is what this paper is about- that TAPE has great potential to bring transformative power to data when Steps 0 and 3 are conducted in a participatory and contextualized manner with the necessary resources. It is our perception that in the majority of cases, a consultation with FAO and with a guided and careful review of TAPE questionnaires and indicators allowed for a successful application of TAPE. By far the biggest challenge has been encouraging end users to put the necessary time and resources into conducting a participatory Step 0 and Step 3 and to move from data collection into how data should be used for decision making which includes analyses of transformative domains, power and access (Anderson et al., 2019) via participatory methods (Duru et al., 2015). This is essentially the policy bridge approach.

Other challenges in FAO’s broader work on agroecology include the harmonization of science, practice, and social movement and attempting to support these three domains simultaneously and equally while allowing for the interplay of scale, context, and time frame. There is also a general lack of understanding of agroecology as a food systems approach that has evolved to move beyond agroecological production into the territory and to the entirety of the food system relatively recently (Wezel et al., 2016; Wezel et al., 2020). Likewise, the theoretical movement and interplay between transitions and transformations (Duru et al., 2015; Anderson et al., 2019) has had implications for FAO’s agroecology work and has shown a need for informing many different stakeholders with whom FAO interacts (policy makers, academia, civil society, etc.) and keeps the need to balance these approaches in front of the organization.

Crucial gaps also remain to make this vision a reality. Visual narratives utilizing the 10 Elements of Agroecology are nascent and open-ended and need to be better developed via participatory methods and electronic formats and integrated into existing FAO frameworks and programming, such as Farmer Field Schools, policy dialogues, biodiversity mainstreaming platforms, and optimization/ minimization/trade-offs discussions. Although promoted and encouraged to be used in Step 0 of TAPE, more pilots need to be conducted and funding prioritized to support participatory processes when using the 10 Elements visual narratives in Steps 0 and 3 to make those key evidence-enabling environment connections that are so needed to drive change (FAO, 2023). To date, most uses of TAPE have focused funding on data collection via Step 1 and 2 to support projects and create evidence on the performance of agroecology, but data need to be connected to discussion to drive change, preferably via participatory meetings of diverse stakeholders. Additionally, TAPE should be conducted in time in order to measure the progress and trajectory of change; this requires foresight and dedicated budget but is key for transitions to be successful.

Another key area of opportunity is creating better linkages between TAPE, the 10 Elements, and the Agroecology Knowledge Hub as a democratic driver of the Scaling Up Initiative areas of Work 1 (knowledge and innovation) and 3 (building connections). Linkages are there but are less defined and TAPE data is not present on the AKH yet, and a Visual Narratives guidance tool using the 10 Elements tool has been released (FAO, 2023). To have TAPE territorial evidence, emerging signals and policy responses highlighted on the AKH can help to drive experience sharing and encourage a diversity of actors to utilize the toolbox FAO has developed to elicit change. Representing these global, yet locally context-specific, snapshots of agroecology in action can be an important entry point for policy makers and enablers of agroecology.

The authors would like to acknowledge the contributions of Fabrizia De Rosa, Frank Escobar, Jimena Gomez, Emma Siliprandi, Caterina Batello, Ronnie Brathwaite, Remi Cluset, and Soren Moller for their help and support in the conceptualization and implementation of FAO’s work on Agroecology.

Funding for this research was made possible through FAO Regular Programme Funds as well as from the McKnight Foundation. Grant MTF/GLO/664/MKF entitled “15-113: Strengthening Multi-stakeholder Cooperation on Agroecological Approaches for Sustainable Agriculture.”

The authors have no competing interests. The views expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

• Contributed to conception and design: AJB, AM, DL, MRS, EB.

• Contributed to acquisition of data: AJB, AM, DL, MRS.

• Contributed to analysis and interpretation of data: AJB, AM, DL, MRS.

• Drafted and/or revised the article: AJB, AM, DL, MRS, EB.

• Approved the submitted version for publication: AJB, AM, DL, MRS, EB.

How to cite this article: Bicksler, AJ, Mottet, A, Lucantoni, D, Sy, MR, Barrios, E. 2023. The 10 Elements of Agroecology interconnected: Making them operational in FAO’s work on agroecology. Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene 11(1). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/elementa.2022.00041

Domain Editor-in-Chief: Alastair Iles, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA

Guest Editor: Gabriela Bucini, Plant and Soil Science, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT, USA

Knowledge Domain: Sustainability Transitions

Part of an Elementa Special Feature: Principles-Based Approaches in Agroecology